Many of us feel that the world is going mad. What used to be called “political correctness” is sweeping the country from the Left, and authoritarianism sweeping in from the right. On one hand we have the encampments and Ilhan Omar, on the other, Donald Trump. Names like Audubon, Fisher, and Jefferson are being policed, as I pointed out in the last post, people are self-silencing on and off campus, students are celebrating the Houthis and even Hamas, DEI initiatives are promoting racial divisiveness and the instillation of guilt, people are calling for the defunding and even the elimination of the police, young people are cheering for the intifada all over the world, and so on.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali has a theory (or rather, borrows a theory) to explain all this, one that she lays out in a provocative article in the Free Press. No, it doesn’t mention religion, though she has suggested that Christianity is a way to fight what she sees as the dissolution of the West. Rather, here he describes what is happening in the West, suggests that it’s part of a deliberate four-stage plan (we’re at the end of stage 1), what those stages involve, and how we can stop it.
The article is surely worth reading, as her “stages” do fit nearly into a plan suggested by the journalist Yuri Bezmenov (1939-1993), who spied for Russia, defected to the West, and then described how the Soviet system took over Russia. It is the stages of that takeover (Bezmenov’s “Soviet subversion model”) into which Hirsi shoehorns the West’s own transformation.
You can read her take below, which is also archived archived here. It sounds plausible enough, but I can’t quite buy it. Surely there are people who do seem to be calling for the dissolution of the West, but I can’t quite see the plotting she envisions, nor can I believe that the West is malleable enough to fall for it. Hirsi Ali seems to have been quite taken by Bezmenov and eager to apply his model to the West. You be the judge. Click to read
Hirsi Ali first limns the Western values that are endangered (quotes from hjer article are indented):
The West’s inheritance springs from a peculiar confluence of habits and customs that had been practiced for centuries before anyone branded them as “ideas.” But they are principles—radical ones—that have given us the most tolerant, free, and flourishing societies in all of human history.
Among these principles are the rule of law, a tradition of liberty, personal responsibility, a system of representative government, a toleration of difference, and a commitment to pluralism. Each of these ideas might have been extinguished in their infancy but for the grace of God and the force of their appeal.
. . . Right now, so many Western nations are under grave threat from the twin forces of cultural Marxism and an expansionist political Islam familiar to me from my youth.
Of course Hirsi Ali grew up in Somalia, which became authoritarian and didn’t adhere to these values, so she’s particularly sensitive to their erosion.
Here are the four stages of Western dissolution as outlined by Bezmenov; indented quotes are from Hirsi Ali:
Bezmenov described the subversion process as a complex model with four successive stages, a diagram of which I have provided. These are, in order: demoralization, destabilization, crisis, and finally, normalization.
Hirsi Ali provides a handy chart (made by Bezmenov) of what will be affected by this process, but to me it looks a little like a Unabomber letter, and I’ll reproduce it below. Here are the stages and their expected duration, as well as the signs of the first stage that we’re in now (and nearing its end).
Demoralization
Demoralization is the first stage and requires the subverters’ greatest investment of time and resources. Bezmenov claims the process of demoralization can take between 10 to 30 years, because that is the amount of time it takes to educate a new generation.
The demoralization process targets three areas of society: its ideas, its structures, and its social institutions. The targeted institutions include religion, education, media, and culture. In each realm the old ways of thinking, the old heroes, are discredited. Those who believed in them come to doubt themselves and their ability to discern reality itself.
Think of the cynicism and selective truth-telling young Americans encounter in most classrooms. You know Jefferson owned slaves, right? You know Columbus killed millions? Again, never mind that Jefferson set us on the path to emancipation, or that Columbus knew nothing about epidemiology. A little learning, as the saying goes, is a dangerous thing.
. . .What else can explain the daily displays of moral panic attacks masquerading as righteous activism, from the destruction of artwork to self-immolation? As human life ceases to look inviolable, we might also expect measures like euthanasia to gain steam, not just to help end terminal anguish but to end all manner of non-debilitating hardship. It’s no surprise, then, that we are seeing movements speeding ahead for “assisted dying” in the U.S., UK, the Netherlands, Canada, France, Ireland, and the rest of the West.
Next, the fundamental structures of society—like the rule of law and social relations—are targeted. For example, demoralization in the rule of law would entail undermining our trust in legal institutions and eroding the basis for legal authority. This could be accomplished by presenting the justice system as corrupt or illegitimate and by sowing distrust in the mechanisms of law enforcement. Think of the movements to “defund the police” because of “systemic racism.” Or the conviction last week of the front-runner presidential candidate on 34 counts of obvious political charges.
This stage also includes, says Hirsi Ali, both euthanasia (assisted dying) the breakup of the traditional nuclear family, something she sees as a bulwark of Western values, and “the retrograde practice of polygamy” (now “polyamory”). DEI statements begin to curb academic freedom, and college students begin to feel that “resistance is justified”. This is usually couched as resistance to Israel, but Hirsi Ali says it’s also resistance to Western values. She’s not far wrong here, given that student protestors, in their authoritarian sureness, say that they’re out to “globalize the intifada”. This can be seen as the Islamist takeover of the West (“Turtle Island” as they call it.)
Destabilization
Destabilization is the next phase. This process is considerably shorter, taking anywhere between five months to two years. With demoralization now reaching its full maturity, society is increasingly paralyzed by harsh domestic turmoil across all sectors. Democratic politics take on the character of a vicious struggle for power. Factionalism takes hold. Economic relations degrade and collapse, obliterating the basis for bargaining. The social fabric frays, leading to mob rule. Society turns inward, leading to fear, isolationism, and the decline of the nation-state itself, leading to crisis.
It is important to understand that, at this stage, the process of subversion is largely self-propelled. What once required active involvement on the part of a subverter has now taken root and grows organically. Then, society ruptures all at once in a rolling series of crises as the full extent of the cancer manifests.
I’m not sure that we’re not at the beginning of this, but of course one could couch Trump’s campaign as part of the struggle for power. I’m not sure, however, if you can see this happening, or beginning to happen, in the rest of the West.
Finally, we have the two final stages:
Crisis and normalization
Bezemov says the “crisis” phase is supposed to last 2-6 months, and Hirsi Ali doesn’t mention it. That leads to “normalization”—presumably the Western acceptance of a new authoritarian set of values, as in Nineteen Eighty-Four. This stage is supposed to be indefinite:
Finally, says Bezmenov, a subverted society enters the normalization stage, which is when the subversive regime takes over, installing its ideology as the law of the land. By then, the enemy has totally conquered the target society—without ever firing a shot.
WHO IS DOING THIS?
Hirsi Ali says she can “discern at least three forces” producing this dissolution.
The first: American Marxists. This category includes old card-carrying communists, red-diaper baby socialists, antifa anarchists, and many of whom we now call woke. Though the Soviet Union collapsed decades ago, the Soviet worldview has found familiar proponents: young Americans and their professors. They are no longer advancing their cause merely through class struggle, but through the fusion of racial, class, and anticolonial struggles. Theirs is now a cultural communism; they lead subversion through the institutions with the ultimate aim of overthrowing the West.
The thundering socialists of the past (think of poor Bernie) seemed to earnestly care about the working class. Perhaps they did so naively, but at least they loved the poor. Does AOC? Rashida Tlaib? My former countrywoman, Ilhan Omar?
So this is largely the extreme Western Left. And they will be allied with members of the next group, as indeed they have, at least on campus:
The second force is the radical Islamists, who are riding the coattails of the communists to power. A good example is the Muslim Brotherhood and its many tentacles. Of these tentacles, some are openly religious, like the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the Muslim Students Association, each with chapters in nearly every American university. Other organizations don a secular mask, like the so-called Students for Justice in Palestine. These groups have become increasingly confident over the past months. Anti-Israel Muslim candidates recently won elected seats in countries like England, where imams talk openly about reestablishing the caliphate in Europe.
The question at hand is whether Marxists and Islamists can produce some kind of coherent society, for Islamism aims to convert the entire West to tenets of Islam, tenets that are very different from those of Marxists. If both groups are trying to destroy the West, they may succeed, but ultimately they’re working at cross purposes.
Things become even weirder when you add in the third “subversive” force:
The third force is the Chinese Communist Party. The most obvious avenues through which the CCP has spread subversion in America is through its numerous Confucius Institutes. These organizations have been vehicles for Chinese espionage within major American academic institutions. Then there is TikTok, an addictive social media app controlled by the CCP, which presents Chinese children wholesome, educational content while wreaking havoc on American kids—polarizing them and feeding them anti-American propaganda.
In the end, then, and not necessarily consciously, the phases are being propelled by a mixture of American Marxists/Socialists, radical Islamists, and Chinese Communists. In Hirsi Ali’s view, this combination will destroy Western values, but what kind of society will it produce? Does each group envision the same kind of endpoint? Maybe that doesn’t matter; perhaps the groups just hate Western values and will fight it out for power after they’re gone. Here’s the chart Hirsi Ali produces to show the process. She doesn’t mention it, nor that it was created not by her but by “Tomas Schuman”, a pseudonym for Bezemov himself.
How do we stop this? First, says Hirsi Ali, we need to “recognize the good activism from the bad”, and she says that “there is no easy way” to do this ave “pay attention to your gut and avoid being recruited by people for subversive causes. Even if we’re undergoing this dissolution, that doesn’t seem as hard as Hirsi Ali makes out. Don’t support Hamas, Rashida Tlaib or DEI, don’t become an encamper, and, I guess, avoid all the pejorative forms of wokeness. I would add that you should speak up if you see Western (or “liberal”) values attacked.
What is happening? Speaking for myself, it’s not absolutely clear what Hirsi Ali is saying. Is she just describing only how Russia became communistic, or describing what’s really going on in the West? Are we going through these four stages in order? I’m not sure. Is there collusion among the groups to destroy Western values? No, surely not, even if they have the same aim, for the society that each group aims for is very different.
In the end, all I can say is that Hirsi Ali correctly points out that many groups and many protesters are, in the end, bent on the destruction of Western values. But this has been said by many others; to name two, Hirsi Ali herself in her earlier works and Douglas Murray. And you’ll have encountered this idea before. To me the serious point of the article is nothing new (though recognizing the aims is important), and the new point—that we may be going through a Soviet-style transition to dictatorship and authoritarianism—is not very convincing. The more I think about her article (it’s also on audio, but I haven’t listened to it, and the audio may be a bit different from the Free Press article.
At this point the chief factors in successful subversion appear to be carried out primarily internally by Donald Trump and his sycophants in the Republican Party. Go down the category list and take inventory.
I couldn’t agree with you more, Randy. Conspicuous by its absence from Hirsi Ali’s list of forces is what Claire Berlinsky labels the New Caesarism, that is, the power grabs by strongmen, such as Putin, Xi, Modi, and Trump. Compared to the threats of takeover by the New Caesars and their moneyed backers, Hirsi Ali’s putative threat coming from American Marxism is a small thing.
Before WWII Western governments were convinced the biggest threat was bolshevism. And they had good reason to feel this way. But the biggest threat was Hitler. Trump, with the aid of the woke left will probably win the next election. It’s not new and it’s not hard to see how far left extremism enables fascism. And as for Islam and Marxism not exactly friendly, Stalin and Hitler, ideological enemies,made a pact which helped bring on the war. And I think the effect of propaganda from the former USSR has not been exposed as it should have been and is still a factor.
To Stephen’s comment: I think it’s more complicated than that. Claire Berlinski’s article (you’re referring to “The New Caesars”, correct?) is a good one, for sure. I’ve read it before and like to return to it periodically. I see numerous, subtler forces at work in addition to the “strongmen” you mention, though. I may be oversimplifying your point. You probably have much more to say about this (I often dive into these conversations before reading through all the comments. That is my bad habit. I apologize for that) We are definitely going through some confusing and troubling changes. I share much of Hirsi’s unease. I’m not ready to nail it down so patly as she has, though.
+1
There seems to be a growing instability, on this I agree with Hirsi Ali. I think voting out incumbents is the most stabilizing thing an individual can do, and limiting presidents to two terms was a brilliant bi-partisan moment.
I rather see them as a reaction to the ongoing subversion.
I saw the podcast with her and Richard Dawkins. Richard was not his usual self, he let her slide completely on her straight line from an Atheist to Christianity. She was logical in an illogical way.
+1
Thank you for this.
I just read her piece. It’s interesting. There are parallels, but it’s difficult to say if what’s going on is actually what she seems to say is going on. Why? She starts a priori with Bezmenov stages and, from there, she finds current events that seem to fit. Maybe they do fit, but maybe they’re only loosely related. In other words, it’s hard to say if an actual revolution is in the works or whether it’s just that a lot of weird stuff is going on. For it to be a revolution as per Bezmenov, does it need to be coherent and concerted—something planned with a future in mind? If so, then I don’t think we have that. But I do agree that, at least for now, we do have a mess that needs fixing.
“To me the serious point of the article is nothing new…” – J. Coyne
Left-wing/right-wing/religious extremists are seeking to subvert (secular) liberal democracy. Who woulda thunk it?
She’s gone all James Lindsey on us.
+1
I’m sceptical. I don’t think that Bezemov’s schema bears any resemblance to what actually happened in the run-up to the Russian Revolution and its aftermath; nor do I see any such programme during the Chinese CP’s rise to power. It may well be that some people and groups are trying to do some of the things set out in his Stage 1, but I don’t see the evidence for this being part of a long-term strategy. There is already a backlash to a lot of it, from the traditional liberal left as well as from the right. Hirsi Ali is right to be worried, but not to worry about the end of civilisation.
Oh, and by the way: more religion is not a solution.
I agree. Russia and China are up to no good, as Anne Applebaum laid out in the Atlantic, but it’s more scattershot disinformation than some kind of detailed plan with well-defined stages.
Russia, for example, is interested in getting gullible westerners to support his war against Ukrainian “Nazis”. So it publishes misleading articles in the English-language RT. Putin’s main interest is Putin.
I believe that all of the problems she discusses are homegrown and entirely the product of Western liberalism. We are not being subverted by external nefarious forces; what she sees is the natural social evolution of industrial society. Once an industrial superstructure is built that:
1. Atomizes people, disconnecting them from their families, turning them into nomads for work, monopolizing their time for work, and transforming them into hedonistic, individualistic consumers;
2. Sows division between men and women, leading to a situation where young people not only aren’t having sex—a natural and important activity for them—but also aren’t forming families;
3. Tells them that contentment comes from “personal achievement” rather than from the social bonds they form;
4. Encourages them to be grateful for this inhuman state of affairs simply because they can go to a store and buy chips whenever they want;
You will inevitably get mass discontent in your society. People won’t want to defend it, won’t want to reproduce its culture, and will look for increasingly radical ways to express their dissatisfaction. All the little hypocrisies that adults learn to cope with as they mature become intolerable. The pervasive meaninglessness and loneliness breed anger, which searches for an outlet.
It’s no wonder that students support groups that seek the destruction of our allies and “inshallah” the West. It’s no wonder that Islam, which claims to have all the answers to their problems, speaks to them. It’s no wonder that Marxism is appealing to them, as it asserts that capitalism and the society it creates are not inviolable products of nature and can be changed.
Food for thought, Emily, thanks.
When individual autonomy is elevated to an ultimate value, then much of what you describe follows. I agree with you, Emily, that there is a more fundamental cultural [r]evolution underway that is stimulating interest in alternative modes and prompting reactions against the West among her young, but I also agree that there are those with long antipathy toward their own culture who have inculcated this attitude in the youth. Others then opportunistically exploit this for geopolitical gain.
Can we imagine a national leader today invoking duty, honor, country without being scorned by the “sophisticated”? To speak of obligations not chosen, particularly if they collide with self-interest, risks drawing a blank look, if not derision. The fundamental bonds of family, where not already decayed, are under assault. Self-absorption masquerades as concern for others. Those who think differently are not only wrong but evil.
Any society must have common bonds among its people if it is to survive. What are our bonds? The system of government is attacked by left and right. Long-established rights are derided and undermined. Bonds of religion are breaking. Common heritage is fading. A multicultural mixing is giving way to Balkanization. Our supposedly best and brightest lead the charge to tear down what others have built; the talentless always envy the creators.
Others among them cower in fear and go along with it all because “conserving” the best of our heritage sounds so, well, conservative. Those who have the fortune of not being schooled into the mass conformity and cowardice that characterize our credentialed class sense that something is wrong. They can be uncouth; they can be misguided in their solutions; they can unwisely rally to charlatans, despots, and clowns. But they are not wrong. Their leadership class has failed them, but we have also failed ourselves.
Want to know why Putin has appeal for many on the political right? His analysis of the West is clear-eyed; he puts his finger on problems that they see, problems that their own leaders either deny or were slow to realize. They listen to Putin’s speeches, or at least snippets, that the Kremlin ensures are captioned in English. He outlines much that is happening in the West and he gently ridicules our lack of originality. Russia has seen it all before—long before 1917. If the West wishes to go that way, then, feel free, he says. Russia will not stand in your way.
You, Doug, and Emily both make many good, important points. Excellent anslyses, both.
Probably the largest of Hirsi Ali’s three is the professoriate, which is homegrown. Islamism and CCP recognize that their interests ally; it’s not hard to mesh their efforts with those of college profs. It’s a conspiracy without conspirators, in a sense. Three (or maybe more?) forces, vectors, work in tandem achieving what all three want, all without coordinating.
It makes sense to me. It’s amazing how many of today’s hot-button topics, whether the Palestinians or transgenderism, ties back to Marxists. The thing that is not recognized by most is that we are not in a period of tradition liberal vs. conservative conflict. The West is in conflict with its own people who believe fundamentally that all it’s values and traditions are wrong and need to be extirpated. Because they pray on our traditions of tolerance and fair play, they are able to camouflage their ultimate goal with what seem like liberal causes.
+1
There are a whole lot of adverse forces in operation, a whole lot of positive forces in operation, and a whole lot (the biggest slice) of inertia. But I’d argue that there is no Conspiracy in action… just a lot of fellow travellers (and not necessarily communists) one way or another.
But then Hirsi Ali might see things from a personal perspective which is predisposed to see a Big Thing in operation rather than lots of confusing tiny things.
“The first: American Marxists. This category includes old card-carrying communists, red-diaper baby socialists, antifa anarchists, and many of whom we now call woke.” – Ayaan Hirsi Ali
“Marxism” isn’t a catch-all or umbrella term for communism, socialism, anarchism, and “wokeism”, since there are non-Marxist versions of all of these.
She then speaks sloppily of “cultural Marxism”, which she shouldn’t do. There really is such a political phenomenon as cultural Marxism, but right-wingers use this term very often in a conspiracy-theoretical, reality-distorting way similar to the Nazispeak of “cultural bolshevism”.
* Cultural Marxism in the OED: https://www.oed.com/dictionary/cultural-marxism_n?tl=true
* As for the real Cultural Marxism:
Doug Kellner (2021): Cultural Marxism, British Cultural Studies, and the Reconstruction of Education: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00131857.2021.1926982
Bezemov’s schema is NOT an explanation of the rise of the Soviet Union. It is a theory of how the KGB and the Soviets subvert western countries. It is what he knew from his work as a Soviet functionary. She explained this in her article. She wrote: “The rest of his life was dedicated to exposing the secret Soviet apparatus of subversion in the West.”
We know how Lenin and Stalin created the Soviet system, no theory needed there. It is western subversion that he and she are trying to explain.
I’ve just started Cynthia Farahat’s 2022 The Secret Apparatus: The Muslim Brotherhood’s Industry of Death. It’s surprisingly readable considering all the detail (and footnotes), and very relevant to this thread. For example, she documents the Muslim Brotherhood’s direct connection to various front organisations such as CAIR.
TP (and others) will also be interested in her dissection of their public face vs. the hidden policies and practices.
I have no illusions about the Muslim Brotherhood and CAIR. I read a lot about this after 9/11.
Islam wants to spread worldwide. But it doesn’t seem to be having much success so far. They’ve had some converts, but far short of what they need.
I don’t worry about it anymore.
Of course, I’m not Jewish or the butt of the student protests. I find them appalling.
But are the students actually going to convert to Islam? I doubt it.
Islam doesn’t have to spread by making converts, it is spreading in Europe primarily by mass immigration and by those immigrant populations having more children than the host populations. For example, London is now 15% Muslim. Some London boroughs are above 35% Muslim. It’s similar in a lot of other European countries.
Spot on! Add in the higher birth rates from these immigrants and fast forward 20 years. Huge market for prayer mats very likely.
That’s very discouraging. I’m opposed to this level of immigration.
Thirty years ago, it would have been unthinkable to have in Congress someone like Ilhan Omar. Now, Pres. Biden is diminishing US support to Israel in order to cater to Muslim American voters (well, also to other pro-Hamas Americans).
We are pattern seeking monkeys.
Buchanan caused an uproar at the 92 republican convention talking about culture wars. MSNBC uses that term routinely now. The used to say ‘so-called culture wars’ but now it’s just ‘culture wars’ because there is nothing so-called about it.
Activism is the source of all the bad things people that people do to each other. Good intentions seem a bad guide to organize human societies. It leads to elitism (my intentions are better than yours) and hollows out democracy because the moral modest people have no voice; we hear predominantly extreme opinions from a small sample of the population.
We need more Feynmans and less Hirsi Alis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFcMot8oCrQ
Brilliant.
EXACTLY where I arrived a few years ago.
She is crackers.
In the wrong paddock.
Approaching it with a similar mindset to her deemed adversaries.
Democracy is less than a century old, meaningful democracy, and has now spread beyond the old West which improbably bore it.
It’s here to stay because most common folk given the opportunity embrace it.
Its main ideological enemies are typically cognitively gifted screwballs.
Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky, after being released and settling in the West, thought that a subversive process was unfolding in front of his eyes. Here is a quote from a speech he held in 2009:
“Many of you must have heard of philosopher Herbert Marcuse from the Frankfurt School. It is his ideas that are being put into being in today’s world. And they are very simple ideas. Marcuse was a Marxist revisionary, and did not agree with Marx only because Marx thought the revolutionary class was the proletariat, while Marcuse claimed that the proletariat is a dwindling class, therefore the true revolutionary bridgehead included all sorts of minorities, outcasts, pathological personalities – all of them together making up the revolutionary element of the society. One of Marcus’s works is called Repressive Tolerance, where he argues that it is necessary to proclaim any pathology a norm, and only then, he says, we will destroy the bourgeoisie society. The activists who supposedly protect the rights of minorities, homosexuals, and feminists do not care about the minorities as such at all. They, just like Lenin, use the minorities as a tool to exercise pressure on the society and to control it… You know, there is a nomenclature here, because for the activists it is their career, life, status, money. They gain influence over the minorities, just like Lenin gained influence over the proletariat, and then proceed to use that influence as leverage in their struggle for power.”
https://web.archive.org/web/20110113150111/http://www.successfulnation.com/en/index.php/123/comment-page-1
Marcuse was nuts too.
Adrift with fellow neo-Hegelian Marxists and Postmodernist Frankfurters, rafting aimless on a sea of delusion.
Blind to facts, to the evidence.
Too “bright” for their own good.
This is an excellent essay, proving much needed insight into the current turmoil. I completely agree with Hirsi’s analysis. These consistent and persistent efforts of totalitarian forces to subvert the West is not a theory (as some called it) but a fact.
Bezmenov is brilliant and his testimonials are damning. I encourage everyone to watch his videos (one is linked in Hirsi’s essay). If you doubt his first-hand accounts, I recommend to read “Judgment in Moscow” — a collection of memoranda of the Central Committee of CPSU stolen and compiled by dissident Vladimir Bukovsky. To give a taste, we showed an example from it in this post: https://voicesagainstantisemitism.substack.com/p/newsletter-april-27-2024